I love love love this soup. It’s cozy and spicy and comforting and wonderful on a chilly fall or cold winter day. Thank you for making it for me!

I have to say having it for years, I absolutely adore our stick blender. We bought it before they were all the rage and the avg price was still under $30. There are still a few less expensive ones that still get good reviews on amazon – like: http://www.amazon.com/Proctor-Silex-59735-Immersion-Blender/dp/B00023XDJ0/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1261005041&sr=8-3

But if you get the consistency you need with a potato masher than more power to you, I just don’t have the patience

1) Unless you are using the cut-up potatoes pretty quickly, let them sit in some water. If you leave a potato out in the open air, it will turn gray and unappealing pretty quickly. Just drain them when you are ready to use. (I’m sure you know this, Fred. I’m speaking to your readers who might not have the cooking chops you do.)

2) If you are going the standing blender route, BE CAREFUL. Blending hot soup is like setting up a fireworks display–not a problem unless you mess something up, in which case….

3) Queso fresco is a great melting cheese, so it probably would be awesome. Any place that has chipotle en adobo should probably have it.

Every time you post something like this, you make me want to start foodblogging.

Nan

Making my own broths and stocks is definitely a good thing when I can make the time & storage space for it.

I have been making a ton of soups recently and just can’t bring myself to buy the hand blender. First it was lots of messy transferring to hot and even messier blendering, but now I just use the potato masher and just smash my soups up right in the pot. Seems to work well so far.

I’ll tell you what has made a huge difference to my soups. Making my own vegetable broth. It’s super easy and a fun afternoon project that takes up all the burners on the stove (depending on how much you want to make). I freeze the end result in old 2 litre juice containers or big ice cream tubs and then I always have them when I need them. Makes the soups vegetarian friendly (I’m not a vegetarian but enough of my friends and guests are) and I find they taste way better than when I use store-bought stocks (using chicken stock makes everything taste like chicken soup; beef stock is good for specific beefie recipes but otherwise too strong and bought vegetable stock either has no flavour or is practically a soup in itself).

Making your own veggie stock also is a great way to get rid of older veggies or ones you have too many of. You can even use clippings and peels.

I will make this. It sounds warming for winter. I like winter soup making.

Got an asiago cream sauce recipe over at tminds today, if so inclined –

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2009/12/16/painting-with-shotguns-xvi/

– c.